Sally Wiener GrottaCasio Exilim Pro EX-P700The Casio Exilim Pro EX-P700 is easy to use and is loaded with lots of useful, fun, and quirky features. It captures sharp color images, and gives users lots of bang for their buck, though its performance is comparatively slow.

The Casio Exilim Pro EX-P700 is easy to use and is loaded with lots of useful, fun, and quirky features. It captures sharp color images, and gives users lots of bang for their buck, though its performance is comparatively slow.

The $599 Casio Exilim Pro EX-P700 has much to offer users who want lots of features and relatively good ease of use. And despite its poky performance and inconveniently scattered analog buttons, there's a lot under the hood to appeal to serious amateurs and point-and-shooters alike.

The all-metal, dark grey and nickel-trimmed EX-P700 is light, slim, and generally well built; despite its lack of an effective non-slip grip or surface and a flimsy plastic door concealing its ports, it's easy to hold and operate, even one-handed. The optical viewfinder is more accurate than those on many comparable cameras, but it lacks a focusable diopter, essential for eyeglasses wearers. On the other hand, its 2-inch LCD is bright, and the text menus are highly readable and well organized. The select dial can be easily rotated by thumb, but many of the analog buttons require both hands to access. Oddly, several of the buttons are on the side, rather than the back of the camera, forcing the user to tilt the camera to read the abbreviations. While the camera has a PC connector for attaching an external strobe with bracket, it doesn't have a more convenient hot shoe.

Like its predecessor, the 6MP EX-P600, the EX-P700 has a Canon f/2.8 to f/4 4X optical zoom lens, which has slightly wider angle coverage 7.1 to 28.4 mm (equivalent to 33 to 132 mm in 35-mm) than most comparable cameras. It has virtually the same feature set as the EX-P600, including aperture and shutter priority, manual exposure mode, Best Shot Selector, and visual help cues that pop up when you press the Set button, as well as exposure, white balance, and focus bracketing. One feature we found disappointing is the camera's video mode: It can only shoot 320-by-240 video, though it can shoot until memory is full.

It does, however, have some nifty (but less critical) features, such as a world alarm clock with voice message capability, a self-timer that shoots three consecutive images and lets you select the best, and a month calendar that displays a thumbnail of the first shot taken on each date. On the LCD, users can select a variety of views, including grid lines and a real-time histogram, but the full EX Finder information display of concentric circles (it's reminiscent of a pilot's heads-up display), while visually intriguing, is confusing and hard to get used to. Some will never like it, but for those who do master it, it's a powerful tool.

The EX-P700 shoots JPEGs and TIFFs, but not the more versatile and higher-quality RAW format. Shutter lag is negligible, and boot time3.1 secondsis good, compared to our other 7MP contenders. When it comes to recycling with flash and LCD enabled, however, this is the slowest of the bunch, at a dismal 4.6 seconds. And in burst mode it shoots only 5 frames at 3 frames per second, compared with the EX-P600's 6 frames at the same rate. Averaging 1,475 lines, the camera's resolution is excellent, and its average pixel transition ratio of 2.0 percent is quite good as well, though compared to the other 7MP sharpshooters, it's actually in the bottom half of the roundup.

The overall quality of our test daylight shot was very good to excellent, though it was very slightly underexposed, with a small loss of shadow detail. Detail was sharp, and colors were rich and accurate, with minor to negligible purple fringing. Our test flash shot, however, was very overexposed, washing out colors and clipping highlights.

The Casio Exilim Pro EX-P700, which will be widely available in January 2005, is easy to use and offers lots of useful, fun, and quirky features. It captures sharp, colorful images, and gives users a lot of bang for their buck, though its performance is comparatively slow.

Casio Exilim Pro EX-P700

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Bottom Line: The Casio Exilim Pro EX-P700 is easy to use and is loaded with lots of useful, fun, and quirky features. It captures sharp color images, and gives users lots of bang for their buck, though its performance is comparatively slow.

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About the Author

Sally Wiener Grotta is a contributing editor of PC Magazine, a professional photographer, a digital artist, and an early pioneer in computer graphics. She has coauthored several books with Daniel Grotta, including The Illustrated Digital Imaging Dictionary (McGraw-Hill). Her expertise extends to digital cameras, scanners, printers, imaging and illu... See Full Bio

More From Sally Wiener

Daniel Grotta & Sally Wiener Grotta are PC Magazine's Digital Photography Gurus and widely respected experts on imaging and anything to do with pictures in computers. Known for their down-to-earth, easy-to understand approach to fun, creative photography and image editing, the Grottas are the authors of "PC Magazine Guide to Digital Photography" (J... See Full Bio

Casio Exilim Pro EX-P700

Casio Exilim Pro EX-P700

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